A quiet, personal moment
by Discarded Ideas
Summary: A scene upon a couch incites introspection into a love that should not exist, yet stubbornly clings to life. One-shotted, one-sided Jalex, from the nerdy end.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters contained within this story. It was written as an act of tribute and practice. Please do not sue me. I'm poor.

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Justin closed the door to the refrigerator with a hip check, his arms occupied with balancing his late afternoon snack. His concentration was so focused on his nearly full glass of orange juice that he almost didn't notice the sleeping form on the orange, living room couch, but as soon as his eyes caught sight of a long, stray lock of wavy, dark hair peeking out from over the couch arm rest he stopped dead in his tracks. She wasn't supposed to be here. He had heard her make plans to go see a movie with Harper earlier. Still, there was no mistaking the hair. At least, not for him. After depositing his all but forgotten snack on the kitchen counter, he took small, quiet steps towards the couch.

Alex lay curled up on the couch on her left side, her head resting on one of their mother's colorful throw pillows. She was wearing a standard outfit consisting of mostly purple and black cloth wrapped closely around her body. The normally expressive face was uncharacteristically calm, and her deep, even breaths expanded and depressed her lithe figure with a mesmerizing rhythm. Her dark eyes rested underneath her eyelids, flickering every now and then in response to her dreams. The girl's left arm was bent up towards her head, with its palm pressed lightly against her left cheek while her straightened right arm lay atop her slender right thigh.

Everything pointed towards Alex being deeply asleep, but Justin was cautious by nature, so he called softly, "Alex?" After a breathless half-minute filled with no response from her, he took a quick survey of the living room, paying extra attention to any types of noise. His check revealed no one besides the two of them, which he had expected. He had just left Max in the park where he was playing soccer with his friends, and his parents were busy preparing for the quickly approaching dinner hours. After one more hurried glance around his general vicinity, he took a seat on the nearby, matching armless chair.

Immediately after sitting down, Justin's legs were forced apart as his upper body bent towards the prone form of Alex. She looked almost angelic when she slept, the relaxed form of her figure affording her a look of classical beauty. It was a form that the master artists of old would have fought for the chance to paint or sculpt. If they were into pop punk clothing, that is. Of course, it was hard not to be into it when it was framing a body like this one.

He cringed as soon as his mind caught up to that thought, like he had done every time he thought about the girl laying before him, his sister, in that type of light. Like he had been doing with a frequency that seemed to be increasing with each day. He was a smart guy. He knew incest was illegal, and even understood the biological principles behind it. When two people with similar genetic codes produced offspring, the chances of recessive chromosomes that expressed genetic diseases and defects pairing homozygously increased exponentially. That was knowledge, however, and it had no effect on the raw, unadulterated feelings that rushed through him every time he looked into the dark, mischievous eyes of Alex Russo.

She had a way with him, and everyone knew it. Well, she had a way with everyone, and used her charm to get out of trouble on a daily, nearly hourly, basis. Between them it was special, though. He had been her favorite punching bag since birth: grabbing onto his cheeks tightly as a baby, following him constantly as a toddler, asking him an endless string of questions in grade school, and now manipulating him to the best of her abilities as a teenager. Sure, she played pranks on everyone, but she saved her best for him. He wished he could say that he gave as good as he got, but he knew that he didn't. In addition to having a natural talent for causing trouble, Alex knew him better than anyone else did. Those two facts often combined to provide him with the shortest end of the stick possible. It was a situation he welcomed though, for the mere fact that it meant that he was special to her.

It was a fact that lit up his otherwise dreary life. He spent most of his days trying to improve himself; be it mentally, musically, physically or magically. It was dull work, but he and his family had become accustomed to the results. No one in the household would be prepared to see him fall from his vaulted position as pride of the family, which was something that would definitely happen if he were to allow his feelings for the girl in front of him to slip from his heart and into reality. Of course, his life wasn't all discipline. He had hobbies and friends who shared his interests, but they could only distract him for so long. If he spent too much time on any one thing, after a while it began to feel like a chore. There was only one person that he wouldn't mind spending the entire day with, no matter the circumstances. Only one person ever made his heart feel like it was going to escape its thoracic cavity. Only one person made him revel in the fact that he was alive.

Justin let his eyes rest on her face. Her facial features had always been perfect: from the positioning of her eyes, to the shape of her nose, to the poutiness of her lips. Recently, though, it had shed the remainder of its baby fat, and was becoming more beautiful at a terrifying rate. There were thousands of hearts destined to be broken after gazing upon it, while his, and his alone, was doomed to be obliterated. It would be impossible for him to love another face as dearly or as desperately as he loved this one. He'd tried. Miranda had probably come the closest because of the familiar combination of good looks and an unconventional, defiant attitude. She had reminded him faintly of Alex, but not enough to sustain the relationship after he realized that her "unique" view towards life was a mass produced one that she shared with millions of other gothic teenagers. Miranda hadn't recklessly been following the whims of her heart bridled loosely by her sense of morals, and her defiance hadn't stemmed from an intense belief in herself. She had turned out to be a poor substitute for Alex in everything that mattered.

After all, in the end it wasn't Alex's looks that held his heart captive. There was no denying that she was beautiful, but there were plenty of beautiful girls in New York. None that he could imagine off of the top of his head while Alex was in sight, but he knew that they existed. And he knew that he didn't care. He hadn't watched those girls develop from a malcontent pre-teen into a fiercely independent woman. He couldn't see the indomitable spark of life waiting behind their dark eyes, searching for and then chasing after everything that caught her interest. He wouldn't ever see their distraught faces turning towards him in their time of need, absolutely certain that he would find a way to fix their problems.

And that look of absolute trust and honest love was what had ruined him for other women. His conviction towards its genuineness stemmed from the fact that she had been showing him that same expression since the first time they met. The features had evolved into something impossibly gorgeous, but the soul behind the eyes remained the same. And it loved him. Like a brother. Like it should. Not like he did. He was disgusting. Hell, he was a pervert.

Was it his fault that he felt like he did? He stood up and moved closer to Alex's body, his eyes raking themselves up and down her gently curving form of their own accord. Wasn't there someone else he could blame? Why was there a biological hindrance to his love for Alex, and not an emotional one? Sure, there was a societal taboo for what he was feeling, but he had managed to bypass that somehow. No, Alex had managed to bypass it by successfully becoming the only girl in the world who mattered to him. Whenever they walked around together in unfamiliar places they were always mistaken for a couple. Those were some of the happiest moments of his life, because it felt like he was living his dream. At least superficially.

He would never act on his emotions, though. To do so would be to dishonor the trust that Alex had placed in him. To provide a hindrance for her joyous hugs, and her quiet smiles. She would cease sharing her observations, both general and introspective. She would stop looking at him with love shining through her deep, dark eyes. And that, even more than the dishonor he would receive from the rest of his family and everyone else he knew, was something he was not willing to give away. Even on pain of death, which was certainly looming on the horizon. After all, the sheer speed at which his heart was beating as he bent his waist and brought his face closer to hers certainly had to be lethal. And even if it was not, someday soon Alex would find another man to trust implicitly. To save her best pranks for. To love above all other men in the planet. His place in her heart would be eclipsed, and the light of his life extinguished along with the reason for the beating of his heart.

For no matter how easy it would be for him to bend down a little bit more and place a kiss on her tender lips, he wouldn't do it. He knew that that wasn't his place in her world, no matter how desperately he wanted it to be. That position belonged to the luckiest guy in the world. A guy he would probably befriend because there was no way that Alex, who seemed to have a talent for seeing the world the way it really was, would pick the wrong guy to spend the rest of her life with. He realized suddenly, as his eyes forced themselves away from her lips, that it would be far easier for him to run away long before that happened. The wisest time would probably even be right at that very moment due to the constant acceleration of his feelings, but he would not leave her while she still looked for him over her shoulder from time to time. While she still needed him in her life. Maybe the day would come when she didn't, though. When that lucky bastard appeared, perhaps she wouldn't need him anymore. Would he still have the heart to stick around then?

That was a question for another day. For now, she still needed him for mundane things like this. His right hand reached out and gingerly cupped her left cheek. The warm skin that he felt against his palm was indescribably soft. After a handful of moments of lightly tracing her cheekbones with his fingertips the girl's eyes slowly began to open. The dark pools sluggishly took stock of her situation, then immediately closed again after they focused on Justin. In a sleep-heavy voice, she commanded, "Go away, Justin. I was having a nice dream."

Justin removed his hand and folded his arms against his chest as he returned to his full height. His right eyebrow raising high on his forehead, he asked, "Weren't you supposed to be seeing a movie with Harper right about ... now?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked defensively before her thoughts caught up to her situation. As soon as they did, Alex's eyes immediately popped open. "Whoa, what time is it!?" she exclaimed as she hopped into a sitting position on the couch.

Justin peeked down at the analog watch wrapped around his left wrist before answering calmly, "5:15."

"Shoot, I'm late," muttered Alex loudly as she stood up and moved towards the nearest mirror. After arriving at her destination, she sharply turned her head left and right as she inspected her hair for bed-head. Harper had warned her not to take a nap before the movie, but the couch had looked so soft and inviting. She had only planned to close her eyes for a few seconds, a couple of minutes at most. Alex frowned at her reflection. Her red-headed friend was going to be acting mad and righteous all night. There had to be a way out of that annoyance. As if on cue, she caught a glimpse of Justin heading towards the kitchen out of the corner of her eye. A grin appeared on her lips as her way out presented itself to her.

"Hey, Justin!" called out Alex, watching as her brother stopped walking forward. "Wanna go see a movie?" she asked sweetly, sauntering up to his halted body.

Justin twisted his torso around to aim his suspicious expression directly at his sister. "With Harper and you? It's going to be a chick flick." The slight widening of her eyes gave away the answer, so he turned around and called over his shoulder, "No thanks!"

Alex rushed up to her brother and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. After resting her left cheek against his right bicep, she aimed her best puppy dog look up towards his face and let it sit there. When he looked away she knew that she had him. Just one final nudge. "Please Justin?" she asked softly. "I need you."

He kept his head turned away to continue to hide the blush, but he begrudgingly answered, "Alright, but you're paying for my popcorn."

"No can do, bro," said Alex as she relinquished her hold on his waist and retrieved the golden I.P.P. Remote from on top of the bookshelf. She already had him beat; there was no need to sweeten the pot. After she had found the movie theater channel on the remote, she let out casually, "As a matter of fact, I'm going to need to borrow some cash to pay for my ticket."

After a click of a button, the golden pipe appeared above their heads and sucked them up into the magical aether. It left behind nothing but Justin's confused, "Wait, what?"

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A/N: Ending's kinda rough because this was supposed to be either the beginning or close to the beginning of a multi-chapter story in which I severely alter all of the premises of Wizards of Waverly Place with minute twists to the show's parameters. The epic is too ambitious for me to pursue, though, so this is where this little scene ends up: in one-shot land.

Hope you enjoyed it.


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